


At this Time-In this Place

by Zoya1416



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: F/M, May 25th, Memories, The People's Revolution of the Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May, The Trousers of Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 19:53:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14755266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya1416/pseuds/Zoya1416
Summary: There were others who remembered the lilacs.





	At this Time-In this Place

There were others who remembered the lilac also. Sybil remembered Young Sam’s labor, of course. The pain, the pain, and then Sam galloping in with Dr. Mossy Green, who slipped his paddles inside her in a quick flash of more pain, and then Young Sam was here, slipping out moist and red with a wonderful wail of life.

Rosie Palm remembered twice over, both when she yelled her slogan ‘reasonably priced affection,’ and John Keel picked it up, and then years later when she’d gone to Quirm to take a vacation of a few months. When she returned, she rounded a corner onto Treacle Mine Road, and there he was striding along toward her, just like he’d been that day. John Keel to the inch. She blinked, and it was Sam Vimes, the Sam she’d watched grow up in the Watch. He nodded to her, ‘Mrs. Palm,’ and it was the voice, the same voice, and how could it have ever happened? She remembered though, how Keel had come and gone in a few days, and how she’d missed his kindness to her. She was glad he’d still survived, however that had happened, and thanked the gods she didn’t believe in.

Madam Meserole remembered. The best of times, the worst of times. Her careful plans at the party--isolating those who supported Winder, opening pathways to those who didn't--those plans succeeded brilliantly when her nephew frightened Lord Winder to death. Then they quickly disintegrated when Snapcase was as bad as Winder—worse, even. For a long time she was bitter with it. She had put months into the scheme, months insinuating herself into the rich layers of the city, dropping money like rain to buy a beautiful house, provide the best food and drink. Months to scheme for a better future, not to enrich herself. Well, not only to enrich herself, that would have happened, but to gain protection. To gain a legitimate place and voice in city government. It had taken fourteen more years while she and women like her did not get the safety they’d been promised. She'd moved from Ankh-Morpork to Quirm and given up politics. Not until Havelock came into his own had a Guild of Seamstresses been created, and it was lead by Rosie Palm. Rosie had been a girl on the street then! But Roberta wasn't sad--she was proud that she'd started a movement. She was proud of Havelock. Not many men could say that they’d assassinated two Patricians. She always smiled viciously when she smelled the lilacs.

Drumknott didn’t remember He'd been a boy all those years ago, growing up in Uberwald, but he'd studied the brief revolution. He knew about the lilacs, and had always wondered why the Patrician wore one on that particular day. In the classic example that the secretary knows more about the boss than the boss knows about the secretary, he’d caught a few sentences here and there, especially when Madam Meserole visited. Her voice wasn’t as soft as the Patrician’s. He hadn’t lurked—well, he had lurked, but being successful at lurking was practically a job requirement in the Palace He heard her retell the story, even the part where she’d wiped green face paint off the young boy who now employed him. Over the years he’d put together the story of Lord Vetinari running over the rooftops, catching up a sprig of lilac in his mouth— _in his mouth! _—and had to work very hard at not laughing when he heard her retell that part. Four men the boy had killed that day.__

____

Young Sam didn’t remember. But lilacs bloomed every year at his birthday, and as he got older, he realized that his parents changed a bit, then. They seemed to have more on their minds than celebrating him. He sneaked, listened, and heard with awe their reminiscences of Dad’s amazing week leading a revolution. He'd like to fight in a revolution--all those sharp weapons and stabbing bad people. 

____

__It was always and forever Sybil who remembered the most. The night when a rough man had pushed his way into her house, laid out the butler Forsythe, and then called her name—he wasn’t someone she’d ever seen before, but she had no fear. She’d pulled the sword off the wall and prepared to stab him._ _

__‘It’s been a mistake…wrong house…mistaken identity…’ he’d babbled and then run away, and she looked after him as he ran. Mistaken identity—but he’d come to her door and called her name. How odd._ _

__It was still a mystery almost thirty years later when he’d come to the house again asking about dragons. She’d been in the dragon pens and hadn’t seen him clearly; the light was behind him and she was struggling with old Talonthrust III. She’d yelled at whoever it was to help her hold up the dratted beast, and he’d given her backchat about not murdering him. Then she actually saw him and was lucky not to drop her own dragon. He hadn’t recognized her at all. Afterward, he wanted to know about dragons, and she’d told him. They’d spent the next week dashing around the city as the noble dragon did more amazing things. Things it shouldn’t be able to do with its size, its weight. It burned down Treacle Mine Road, and she gave him Pseudopolis Yard. It had done awful, as in awe-inspiring, things which she recorded until she was chained to a rock and Sam came struggling with a sword to chop them off. Then they’d have both died if Errol hadn’t fought and claimed the noble dragon as his mate._ _

__They’d married, after all that to-do about the gonne, and Havelock’s being shot, and she decided she would never find out. It was only when Young Sam was born that his memory came back, and then they spent hours talking about the lilacs and the lilac boys. They went to Small Gods cemetery and laid bundles of flowers along the seven graves._ _

__The year after Young Sam was born, when she was pitching dragon dung, she wondered what would have happened if she’d have dropped the sword and said, ‘Yes, I’m Sybil,’ when a mad stranger rushed in. What if—somehow he’d stayed a few more days and she’d been able to marry then? Sixteen-year-old girls did, but not to scruffy men with no fortune and breeding, not while her father lived. But if in that alternate trousers of time-- _ _I’d have had more children, _ _she thought. _ _More children, and probably easier than a forty-year old could. __When—if—a noble dragon came and she was married, what other girl would have been picked, and would Sam still have rescued her? Of course, it got all quantum at that point. She sniffed, picked up her dung fork, and bent to the task again while the scent of lilacs penetrated the stables__________

**Author's Note:**

> I have been struggling all month to find a proper story for the 25th, and finally realized today that others in Ankh-Morpork had their own memories and histories.


End file.
